Electric, the Californian brand of sunglasses co-founded by Kipp Arnette 14 years ago, has run last week a temporary store across from the entrance of the huge Citadium lifestyle store in downtown Paris, featuring its new logo and an expanded line of products being developed under the same brand. Other pop-up stores of this kind may be opened at various locations in Europe in the near future to draw attention to the brand and to encourage major retailers to make them permanent.
The new products include some T-shirts and Electric's first line of high-performance watches, launched last November, which can go 200 meters deep into the water. The company's first line of skate helmets will come out in the autumn as part of the transformation of Electric into an all-around brand of high-quality surf and skate-inspired lifestyle products.
It has already launched a more technical line of snow goggles and is working on RX sun lenses for its sunglasses, all of which use polycarbonate sun lenses with melanin to block blue light. All the frames are made in Italy in molded nylon supplied by Mazzucchelli.
All these changes are being conducted under the supervision of Kering, the big French luxury and lifestyle group previously called PPR, which also owns Gucci and Puma, among many other brands. It also owns Volcom, which bought Electric previously. Kipp Arnette co-founded Electric after the sale of Arnette by Bausch & Lomb to Luxottica along with Ray-Ban and Revo. He still takes care of the technical side.
Meanwhile, Electric has boosted its staff to penetrate the European market more deeply. After approaching key accounts such as Blue Tomato in Austria, Anthony Cazotte, the general manager of Electric for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has hired Olivier Richard, a former manager of Peak Performance, to take care of sales and marketing in the region.
